On Mon, 24 Oct 2016 17:36:30 -0400 Kevin Gallagher <kevin.gallagher@nyu.edu> wrote:
Hello all, "scientist" (PhD candidate) here in the field of computer science and cyber security.
Most of the scientists I have encountered are not totally malicious, just oblivious to the moral, ethical and political consequences of their work. They are blind enough to believe that their "advances" help society, despite them actually shifting the balance of power away from the people.
There are a few, however, who do what they can to shift power back into the hands of the people. I was greatly influenced by a paper by Phil Rogaway entitled "On the moral character of cryptographic work," and I try my best to do research that works for the benefit of the people, not governments or wealthy power holders. Only time will tell if I am successful, but I will do my best.
There are others who also work with morals in mind. It is not so black and white as "scientists are evil people working for fascists." They are just unaware of the consequences of their work.
That lack of awareness is certainly one of the problems but not the only one. Even forgetting for a second any moral implications, it is a fact that people working in the scientific establishment have strong incentives to 'go with the flow' in order to keep the grants coming. A couple more points. I don't think the majority of people working in the scientific establishment deserve to be called scientists. Those people are not interested in any fundamental truth. They are more like technicians following a manual. *You* are aware of the political consequences of your technical work because you are interested in truth in a more general sense. They are not. And what I was getting at is that Tom's view according to which a 'conspiracy' involving 'every' single 'scientist' is impossible, is a misrepresentation of the actual state of affairs. To use internet slang, he's setting up a 'straw man'. And lastly, I did mention the existence of dissenters. But by definition, dissenters are not part of scientific consensus =P
On Oct 24, 2016 3:06 PM, "juan" <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, 24 Oct 2016 20:58:24 +0200 Tom <tom@vondein.org> wrote:
But if all politicians, all employers, all teachers, all scientists and so on are fascists, parasites,
It's obvious that all 'scieniists' working for the state are parasites working for fascist states. Perhaps you need to research the nature of the political system you live in a bit more?
or idiots, who are the sane people left?
Only you, the russians and the Juan's out there?
C'mon, nobody can be that stupid to really think that EVERY scientist is part of a global multi cultural, multi societal, multi language conspiracy!
I thought it was clear that any dissenter gets silenced or ignored. So you could have saved yourself the misrepresentatin. It's not 'every' one, just the majority.
On the other hand, I'm familiar with 'libertarian' anti-conspiracy bullshit, so you could save it too for...other audiences.
What next? Reptiles governing us? Earth is flat? Bielefeld doesn't exist?
Fuckers. Indeed.